Empirical Research on Acceptance and Ethics toward Dark Patterns Abusing Digital Nudges

Abstract

As digital services such as online shopping or mobile apps driven by digital artifacts become a crucial part of our lives, people often feel annoyed, discomfort, and irritable by these new designs or services. On the one hand, cordiality and paternalistic digital nudges are helpful and acceptable, while malicious sites called dark patterns which pretending to nudge, mislead and intimidate website users, on the other hand. This study examines the evaluation of both the digital nudge and dark pattern sites focusing on their acceptability, desirability, and ethicality. It is revealed that the users think digital nudging sites are desirable and ethical, basically. However surprisingly, though users evaluate dark pattern sites, confirmshaming, visual interference, trick question, and roach motel, are undesirable and unethical, they accept the proposals against their will. This result suggests a future warning to digital service designers and providers about the users’ evaluation and acceptance of reluctant websites. In addition, the significance of the ethical requirements for nudges should be discussed.